#optimization is boring

[lutethebodies]

LTB Worldbuilding Wednesdays: Intro/How I Got Here

When I spun up this blog my goal was simple: a place to dump screenshots of my Tavs and other BG3-related brainrot. My personal site's blog wasn't a good place for it, since I'm a freelancer and it's gotta have at least some concessions to "professionalism," so here we are. But it feels a bit too aloof to do these "Tav Tuesdays" posts chock-full with names and places unfamiliar to 99.9999% of readers here, so "LTB Worldbuilding Wednesdays" have arrived.

They won't be convoluted or super lore-dumpy, but they will provide context for my characters, who've been my 5e mainstays for years—with lives and stories and whatnot—before I imported them into BG3 and forced tadpoles in their heads. For every subsequent post in this series, I'll try to distill the TL;DR of a place or faction or whatever—but only enough for it to be relevant to a given Tav's story, because (again) I don't want to drown a reader in lore (unless that's your thing, which is totally fine and I'm down for asks about that).

I'm also in the middle of churning out a second homebrew fantasy atlas (more on the first one below the fold), so ideally these posts will keep me in the mindset of getting that work done instead of running yet another BG3 playthrough. Wednesdays are the weekly game night for my tabletop 5e group, so it's already a good day to be in worldbuilding-brain.

While it's been extremely fun and fulfilling to do over the past five years, I won't claim that it's the right way or only way to worldbuild, because that's silly given the wealth of other resources out there and the galaxy of creativity we're all capable of. It's worked for me, though, so it's not nothing. Here's a quick rundown of how I got here, with "here" being "a sufficiently fleshed out campaign setting with plenty of room to grow":

Creating a Unique Map Style

I'm a huge map nerd, and have reached a point in my life/career where I get to do freelance map design as a part-time job. I'm shaking off the aesthetic snobberies I learned as a graphic designer, because snobbery is too close to gatekeeping, but I'm still enough of a snob about map style to want my own stuff to be unique. In a sea of samey-looking hand-drawn-hobbit-maps, I wanted my homebrew world to stand out, so here's how I did that:

Creating "Homeworlds" - a brief process piece about my April 2019 digital map illustration project.

Creating "The Game Board" - process and background for my 2019 found-texture fictional map project.

Creating "Found Islands" - a smaller 2021 side-project that sorta refined that found-texture style.

Creating Compelling Names

Once I had a unique visual style, I had to populate the world (or at least start to, one region or place at a time), which required some decisions about toponymy for names of places, people, and in-world history/lore, because pretty world maps can still feel boring without stories of who lives there:

What’s in a Name? Fictional Toponymy for Fantasy Maps - process piece for how I developed naming conventions.

Custom Fantasy Map Illustration - portfolio page for my found-texture digital map work.

The Game Board, 2022 Version - One result of all this was a big fat map poster I'm still proud of.

Creating a Homebrew Fantasy Atlas

A map can only show the names, though—it can't tell the stories to a compelling level of detail—so here's where I got to combine lots of my different personal and professional interests and experience: my own fantasy gazetteer. I made all the maps (aforementioned map nerd), I did all the design work (two decades of experience in publication layout), I created/edited all the iconography/imagery (two decades in design plus two more before that as a generally creative person), and I composed/compiled all the lore (I have an English BA and I dabbled in journalism for a few years). Et voila: "The Nua Gazetteer, Vol. 1" was born.

The Nua Gazetteer, Volume 1: Lands and Lore of Aviridia - portfolio page for the main gazetteer project.

The Nua Gazetteer: Announcement - kickoff/kick in the pants for me to get going on this beast.

The Nua Gazetteer: Production Notes - process and influences on the project as a whole.

The Nua Gazetteer: Release Notes - posts for the digital (2022) and print (2023) gazetteer release.

And that's not even getting into the recording project I did for seven of my bard's songs. Maybe I'll do, like, a brief "Music Monday" series. None of this will ever have the juice of my one runaway Minthara post, but whatever. If it's compelling for me (a brain-rotted lore-bard), it won't be bullshit for you. Thanks for reading all the way to the end!

[squidsploitation]

is the recoil of my rifle

[tribow]

Tell me you don't play indie games without telling me you don't play indie games.

[taylorb6312]

the tridisaster trio survived origin and you can pry that shit from my cold dead hands

“oh but joshua said that he couldnt sense bahamut” bahamut was knocked out by ultima’s attack. we never see dion’s dead body- he has also survived falling from much greater heights

“We watched joshua die” and clive healed his wounds. they never confirmed to what extent

and clive literally woke up on the beach.

[lienwyn]

I haven't drawn using regular graphite in literal years so I decided to do a bit of a warm-up to see if I still remember how. Turns out I do!

[scopophobia-polaris]

first female loz director and the gerudo seem to be written fine enough? wow... there ain't no way I thought we were in the worst timeline after totk

Yeah got through the main quest with the gerudo, it wasn't painful! It wasn't even bad! Still got them outfits but for the most part it was like oh cool!

I would say a lot of that oh cool is from the fact they didn't do a lot to even fuck it up to begin with, I'm gonna be real with yall this game is NOT worth $60USD

Edit: lemme say one thing, you know when people were being like damn totk story wasn't dark or mature at all why was this compared to Majora's mask again? And then all the zeldatwt people came out and said zelda is just a kid series domt expect good writing uH

This one feels like a kid's game. That ain't to say it's terrible I would say, hell I'm not far in it if I get something crazy that's like OH FUCK I'll reblog this post and say something but uh.....game for babies I'm gonna be shocked if anyone struggles with any puzzles cuz you CAN CHEESE THEM EASY ITS 🫢🤭

EDIT EDIT: I SWEAR IM NOT EVEN TRYING TO BE A DOWNER..... @ezlo-x HAS BEEN THERE THE WHOLE TIME IVE BEEN PLAYING....THEY KNOW I HAVENT BEEN A PARTY POOPER.....

[karnalesbian]

Ok as long as I'm also begging God to shape games in my favorite series [plural] in a specific way. Please for the love of fuck let the next fire emblem game (not counting the genealogy remake if that is indeed happening. the next original one whenever that is) PLEASE take notes from Engage's gameplay and not 3H's

please I'm fucking begging Engage had the best gameplay the series has seen in forever I don't care what they do with the story and supports and everything but if they choose to make the gameplay more like 3H than engage just because 3H sold well I WILL find out who made that decision, break into their house and decapitate myself in front of them while their family tries to eat breakfast

[claire-starsword]

local idiot feels brief moment of joy finding legendary pokemon in rom hack before being painfully reminded of how soulsucking the capture mechanics of this series are

[acfan120]

So I finally got the last achievement in Stardew (again), and the last hat matches Tumble's outfit perfectly. Even moreso because she used to have a Blue Bow/Ribbon for her design.

It's funny how that lined up.

[tswwwit]

Wait, aww does dipper sometimes cook for bill? (Well saying making spicy instant noodles is cooking is a little far fetched but still)

I mean, sometimes!

In the Familiar AU, Dipper and Mabel basically grew up with Stan - and experienced the cooking skills thereof. When faced with choosing a life of glitter in his digestive tract, or earnest but burnt waffles, Dipper figured he might as well learn to cook. He's not winning any culinary awards or anything, but he can follow a recipe and make a decent pasta dish.

Besides. The alternative to Dipper cooking for Bill - is Bill cooking for Dipper. And since Bill's idea of delicacies involve terms like 'unholy abomination', 'unbearably spicy', or 'still squirming', Dipper's more likely than not to shove him out of the kitchen.

They mostly get lot of takeout.

[warningsine]

That's what you said about Mariana, Ms. Servin, and yet here you are!

[diorgirl444]

my favourite head cannon is me actually finishing things that i’ve started writing

[hoodiedoodles]

one of the reasons i think Cyberpunk 2077 failed is that one of the supporting pillars of Cyberpunk as a genre is the idea of "live fast, die young, leave a pretty memory"

there are no happy endings in Cyberpunk, only the promise of getting lucky enough that your death can be memorable. as such, the premise of "an unstoppable mercenary protagonist" like V is inherently antithetical to a genre where dying instantly is well within the realm of possibility

2077 doesn't work because as an RPG, the player eventually becomes an unstoppable, wealthy, all-encompassing god-character that effectively can't die, creating a huge immersion break between the values of the genre and the actual game-- it doesn't feel like you're "playing Cyberpunk", it just feels like another bog-standard RPG with a Cyberpunk filter over it

to counteract this, the optimal game for Cyberpunk is probably something where you create a large series of small "characters" that all live spontaneously, randomly, and die quickly, all of which working together to build a complete story through their various achievements and ideals

as such, the best genre for Cyberpunk to be is a roguelite

in this essay i will

[cherubchoirs]

Do you think Gabe and the V-series need / choose to sleep at all in this version of the world?

i do think it's a necessity for the v series though not too often, and something of a rarity for gabriel. with how quickly v1 is canonically making it through hell (based off of gabriel's 24 hour time limit), it wouldn't need to sleep at all in that short amount of time and neither would gabe. however, if they were to continue on for much longer stretches of time, i think both of them do sleep - v1/v2 need to do so in order to update their software and it's used for "dreaming", which in their case is organizing the data they've collected and running simulations of battle (or in v2's case, it also runs sims of conflict resolution). they can have "nightmares" as well, especially after close calls, in which their mind continually runs sims that result in their deaths (and in v1's case, in gabe's death). gabriel needs sleep even less often than they do though, only truly needing rest if he is made entirely exhausted through battle - otherwise, he is meant to be constantly vigilant and requires very minimal downtime, an eternal, tireless worker for the spheres of heaven. he may sleep if he wishes to, but i think he only begins to do so when v1 needs it and they find themselves in one of the totally empty layers of hell. in this case, he's really sleeping for the peace of mind it provides...and being able to stay close with v1 by sharing a bed. after falling, however, gabriel does need to actually sleep on a far more regular basis, no longer nearly inexhaustible and needing rest every few days. initially, again, this is a huge nuisance to him, to actually feel genuine fatigue. but he grows accustomed to it, especially since it puts him and v1 on a more regular schedule (which is much better for v1), and he finds there's sort of something...intimate just about being sleepy together :]

[neige-leblanche]

thank you tgcf for stating that good-hearted characters staying gentle & kind despite hardships CAN be narratively compelling, actually

[3416]

you get it… no one being a woodcroft truther (i know why jndmakw) don’t follow EDM too closely but i liked that his whole thing was letting them lean into their strengths rather than be something they weren’t as far as scoring being the number one priority during their playoff runs (that crazy ass 6-9 game against calgary a couple years back 😭) and i feel like the leafs could benefit from that given offense objectively being their biggest strength as a team -> offense drying up so drastically in playoffs meaning there’s probably a system issue not an issue with the players. i know their old ass fans would hate it though because he definitely seemed like a players coach but who gaf! the oilers seemed to like him a lot and were distraught by his abrupt departure/talked about him never losing the room and a coach being likeable is so important no matter what everyone desperate for someone who shouts at them for everything is trying to convince themselves of

i just think it's more the style the leafs should try out rather than continue to play a defensively minded grind game... esp when it gets to the playoffs. like it's about balance, but you also have coaches to work with the defensive strats too.. and that's why guy boucher on the powerplay this yr confused me bc i'm pretty sure he's ?? a defensive specialist, but okay fljsdklfs. the oilers and leafs are built with similar pieces in my mind, really high end offensive talent, and you need a coach that can handle that and lets THAT part of their game be their strength more than anything else. he'd just bring a different look to the team's style without changing the vibes in the room, bc i don't think that was the problem here contrary to the uncles beliefs, lmaooo. everyone seemed really happy with keefe from a personal standpoint and it's not like they didn't play for him or weren't motivated or he lost the room either. sorry but i just don't think you're gonna pull the best out of someone like am34 without taking players opinions into consideration, lol. he hated playing for babcock for a reason.. why would he like it any more now? i just think woodcroft is the best option on the market, and the oilers weren't even necessarily playoff flops w him.. they went to the conference finals and then lost in the second round to the cup winners all while having hot and cold goaltending after not making it or losing a lot before him like... i'm begging.